


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

by Catory



Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Post-Episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catory/pseuds/Catory
Summary: or: Kujo Kiriya gets back up on his feet after the events of Christmas.





	Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

                          fade                                                                         darkness, along with the truth

                     fate

  own two hands

  what makes you "you"                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                       ….sorry, jungo

                                                                                                        i’ll see you soon

Kiriya wakes up.

* * *

Death really isn't anything like Kiriya was expecting. Not that he really had any expectations for where he would end up, but…

Behind him, the familiar city skyline flickers intermittently over a static night sky. The sun hasn't come up yet, even though it's been more than just a few hours.

Kiriya hasn't tried to go into any of the buildings yet. Somehow, that just kinda struck him as a really bad idea. A row of apartments glitches in a wave down the street. One of the storefronts flips entirely upside down for a split second before it resets to normal. Yyyyeah. That's not happening.

Not that Kiriya really got to this point by having _good_ ideas, though.

He scowls. Honestly, serves him right for thinking that Dan _fucking_ Kuroto didn't have a plan to deal with him. Hopefully, Emu and the other doctors at CR would think to check his personal belongings and find clues that would lead them to Dan Masamune, because it would seriously suck if he died for no reason. If Genm went after the CR team or Snipe, it'd be alright. They had backup, and they knew about Genm and.. whatever the hell that zombie form of his was. And they'd fight together, right?

Kiriya thinks back to all the times they'd fought each other in the short time he'd known those three and winces internally. Er. Hopefully, they'd fight together.

Either way, Kiriya's role in this entire shitty business was done. Even if he wanted to do anything, well, he was _dead_. What could he even do?

* * *

Kiriya thinks that he might be going crazy.

Maybe it's the isolation, or the dead silence, or something but lately, he's been thinking…

What if…

What if he's _not_ dead?

It's the stupidest thing. Kiriya remembers dying. He remembers losing feeling in his limbs, raising his hand up only to see _right through it_ and feeling the fear rise, he remembers it getting hard to breathe even as he came to the decision to not say anything about Emu's status as Patient Zero, not when he had no time to explain it, Emu, you have to change your fate with your own hands keep smiling _I trust you—_

Kiriya swallows dryly. He _remembers_ dying.

But this place… this wasn't the afterlife, was it? If Kiriya had to guess, then… this was the inside of a computer program.

The Game World, right?

(It's not fair. Why the hell is he still alive? Hasn't he done _enough_?)

But there's too much circumstantial evidence for him to ignore, even if he desperately wants to. For example, most of the buildings were… bricks. Solid all the way through, when they weren't glitching to high hell. The windows wouldn't break, the doors wouldn't open… except for a few exceptions. Places chosen with little rhyme or reason to them until he realized that they were all places that either he or Dan Kuroto would have known decently well—Genm Corporation Headquarters, Kiriya's apartment, the coroner's offices— or… game levels. Bugsters and all.

And hadn't _that_ been a pleasant surprise. Kiriya didn't exactly have any way to fight the Bugsters, after all. No Game Driver, no Gashats. It stung to admit it, but all he could really do was run and hide.

And of course, the most damning evidence…

Kiriya lets himself into Genm HQ and kicks open all the doors in his way. He doesn't have to— none of them are locked, after all— but he can imagine that it's Genm's face that he's kicking in and that's satisfying as hell. A desktop sits on the desk at the far end of the room. Already open, with its screen glowing softly. Kiriya sits down with a sigh and leans in close as he mutters to himself.

"So, then, let's see how you've been progressing on this special project of yours, then… Mr. President."

* * *

He'd stumbled across it by total chance. Kiriya hadn't actually expected the desktop to work, not when most of the electronics in the city, barring lights, had been totally dead. (Ha! Dead joke.) Death was, apparently, boring as hell. Nothing to work on, no one to talk to… god, at that point he would have even taken fighting that asswipe Genm all over again just for something to _do_. So when the desktop had actually booted up, Kiriya had felt surprise for the first time in… what? Days? Weeks? Time was difficult to measure here.

At first, he'd just been curious, and going through Genm's files had been a nice way to pass the time. He'd learned quite a bit about the latest sales figures for Mighty Action X, and about some half-finished project that Genm had been working on that was prohibitively technical and boring at a glance. But then Kiriya began to notice something.

The files were changing. And Kiriya wasn't the one changing them. Which meant that…

_Someone else must have been doing it._

He'd nearly fallen out of his seat when he'd realized. First, he'd thought that there was someone else in here, in this awful wrongwrongwrong city, who had access to the desktop. Except that was impossible, because Kiriya rarely moved from place to place anyways— they wouldn't have had the time to change and add programs to this extent.

So if that was the case… then—

Then what if this laptop was connected to something else? Again, it was a stupid thought. But on the other hand, Kiriya could transform into a motorbike. So it wasn't as if he hadn't heard weirder. He decided to test it.

Kiriya changed something slightly in the code, and kept the tab open. Then he settled down in front of the desktop to wait. It only took a few hours for changes to start taking place, right before Kiriya's eyes.

Logically thinking, it _had_ to be Dan Kuroto's doing. Which meant that Kiriya had a front-row seat to everything that Genm was working on and dammit, he needed to know _what_. Not for any particular reason, but just for knowing's sake. That's just the type of person he is. (Used to be.)

Since then, Kiriya's discovered a few things:

The people deleted by the bugsters are all being held in the Gashats. (huh.)

Kiriya was almost certainly inside a Gashat himself. (…huh.)

Kuroto's planning something. A big game, that requires a massive amount of bugster data, and a whole bunch of weird code that's almost impossible to parse. (hu—ara, waitasecond.)

Kiriya's tried his best to make heads or tails of the code but he's no programmer, not really. The only reason he even knew that there was bugster data on there in the first place was because he's spent the last few years trying to make sense of tiny fragments of bugster DNA— whatever he's scraped up from the few times he'd been able to get to a carrier before CR was called in.

Damn it.

If only there was something he could do! Anything! Kiriya starts spinning in the chair, frustrated. If he still had his Driver and Gashat, maybe he could find a way to—

Wait. _Wait._

He puts his feet down and faces the window. Right of him are the promotional posters for Mighty Action X, Taddle Quest, Bang Bang Shooting, and Bakusou Bike.

Wait just one second.

Kiriya slaps his forehead. "Oh, man. I’m an _idiot_."

He begins scrambling around in Genm’s desk. How the hell had he not made the connection? This was a _near perfect replica_ of Genm Corp. as he remembered it, and if that was the case, then there should be Gashats— Kiriya rips open a desk drawer and spots a box half-hidden by a neat stack of papers. When he opens it, he laughs, half in delighted disbelief and half in sheer excitement. He takes one of the Gashats out of the case and holds it up.

"Now this," he says. "Is more my speed."

The lettering and art on the Gashat is barely visible by the light of the computer screen, and the plastic casing is black rather than familiar yellow. But even so, it still feels right in Kiriya's hand.

BAKUSOU BIKE

* * *

Unfortunately, the discovery of the weird monochrome Gashats (while he's… inside… a Gashat? It's a bit confusing, but Kiriya's trying not to think about it too hard) is hardly the solution that he hoped for.

There's nothing on them. They're blank.

Kiriya can tell where the data used to be, from fragments left behind, but whatever was on it before… nothing. Now, Kiriya doesn't _know_ what that means, but he can take a wild guess. Genm had talked about "collecting data from death" back then, hadn't he? So whatever the hell Genm is doing now, Kiriya's willing to bet he's working with the data on these Gashats. (Or "Proto Gashats", as the case may be. Genm's notes are terrible, but that term does get mentioned quite a few times, and Kiriya can connect the dots.)

There's not much he can do about that now. Not that he hadn't tried, of course. If Kiriya could just take a look at the data on the Proto Gashats, then maybe he could… well, he wasn't sure what he could do with that, but he'd probably be able to figure that out when he got to that point.

Except he couldn't, and he didn't, because he'd gotten his ass kicked by that damn security system.

Sure, it had been nice to be able to use a Game Driver again, but with nothing but Bakusou Bike, that boss was basically impossible. Lovely reminder of the old days, before Emu showed up. What a pain. (Who used a VR game as a security system, and set themselves up as a boss in it anyways, jeez?)

Either way, Kiriya had no way of retrieving the data unless he somehow got his hands on another Gashat so he could transform to Level 3.

But that sure as hell didn't mean that he should be sitting around twiddling his thumbs. Fuck that. Maybe he could have been satisfied with that before, when he thought that this might just be some seriously messed up afterlife. But now…

Maybe Kiriya's dead. (And just maybe, he's not.) But either way, he can interact with the outside world. His little test with Dan Kuroto's computer has proved as much.

He _has_ do something. He's been watching Genm's every move for weeks, and even if he can't understand the half of it, there's just enough that Kiriya's getting a bad feeling about the whole business. Whatever this "Kamen Rider Chronicle" was, it wasn't going to be anything good.

Kiriya's got a plan. It's a long shot, but… he'd been working on something before he'd died.

Reprogramming.

He's got a good feeling about it— bugsters are a computer virus, a code when you got down to it, reprogramming is a medical approach to _recoding_ DNA, it'll work! He _knew_ that it could work, he'd spent months researching computer science and epigenetics and he'd been onto something, all he'd needed were some test subjects. He'd been so _close_.

Maybe it's not too late, though. Kiriya's got dozens of bugsters trapped in here with him, and there's a chance— small, but still there, dammit— there's a chance that he could get some useable information to Emu and the others. If he could find some weakness, some critical flaw in the bugsters' DNA to exploit, then maybe they could create a _cure_. And if CR found a cure for bugster virus, then Genm's plan would be fucked, even if Kiriya couldn't break through his security.

So in that case…

Kiriya waits in the shadow of a doorway for the group of Bugsters to come around the corner again. Lucky that they seem to be really simple-minded, honestly. He's been watching them, and as far as he can tell, while small groups of Bugsters moved as a pack, it was possible to draw off a few Bugsters off of a big group.

Kiriya only needs one.

There. Seven of them. Should be good enough. He crouches down and picks up a piece of gravel, slowly. Then, in a quick movement, Kiriya chucks it at one of the bugsters, hitting it square in the head. It chirrs in confusion and looks around, before ambling down the alleyway where Kiriya was hiding.

"Just a little closer…" he mutters under his breath.

The bugster rounds the corner, and Kiriya strikes. Stupid thing doesn't even stand a chance— he's got it on the ground, arms and legs pinned, before it can even react. The bugster falls over and warbles in alarm, as Kiriya crouches down next to it and grins.

"Sorry about this," Kiriya says cheerfully. "But you're coming with me."

* * *

This would be so much easier with an assistant.

"Hold—shit! Hold still!" Kiriya growls irritably at the struggling bugster on the table. Jeez, this was so much easier with dead bodies. How the hell did Hiiro do thi— ah. Right. He had the benefit of anesthesia, huh.

Well, Kiriya would just have to make do without any of that. He reaches for his tools.

"No hard feelings, man." He mutters. "But this is something that I have to do."

* * *

"…so then the Bugster virus injects a sequence of— wait, I can't call this DNA or RNA, what the hell is it even made of? Digital code? Well, whatever—"

Kiriya scribbles that part out on his notes and moves right along, talking to himself as he writes furiously. Papers are littered on the ground around him, and the Bugster tied to the examination table is still making garbled noises as it tries to wiggle free. "The point is, the Bugster virus injects a protein-adjacent complex into the cell that compromises the capability of the RNA polymerase to transcribe DNA, while also substituting its own sequences during certain cell processes that I can't be assed to pinpoint, though you can probably assume that mitosis is one of them. Growth is possibly encouraged by the presence of epinephrine or— shoot, what are the other neurotransmitters released by stress, I can't remember— though I can't rule out the possibility that the _effects_ of the fight-or-flight response are the real culprit here; more testing necessary yadayadayada… but either way. While traditional modes of treatment such as medication might not be the best solution, a program using the Game Driver system to insert 'junk code' into the cell in order to block Bugster virus processes should be simple enough given its extremely distinctive nature, with potential work to be done in targeting specific expressions of the virus with tailored sequences based on code markers..."

Kiriya looks up from his notes and sighs. "Now I just have to write the base program. Shit."

* * *

If an actual programmer ever got a hold of this, Kiriya thinks, they just might try to strangle him. He knows that it's ugly as hell, but it's not as if he knows a lot about computer science or whatever. Actually, he's not even a pathologist— he went to the _Police Academy_ to become a coroner, for crying out loud. And somehow, he is (was?) still probably one of the few experts on the Bugster virus in the world, making him qualified…?

Eh, if it does the job, then it does the job. Really, all the base program needed to do was inject the equivalent of radio static into a cell so that the Bugster virus was unable to replicate. If he had help from someone who actually knew how Gashats or Game Drivers were coded, then he might have been able to come up with something more fancy, but at this point all he's got is guesswork and memory and the wild hope that Emu's special connection with the Bugster virus might be able to make some sense of this mess.

(Just in case though, Kiriya transcribes _all_ of his notes. The ones about Emu, too. If Emu doesn't connect the dots himself, maybe Hiiro or Taiga will.)

And that should be—

Ah. He'd almost forgotten.

Kiriya hesitates for a second, and reopens every last one of the files.

He backdates them to before Christmas.

Can't have the rest of the team getting suspicious, after all. It's tempting to leave a little note or something for Emu, something encouraging or even just a line so that they'd know Kiriya was still out there somewhere, helping. But… Kiriya can't get out of here. Even if this wasn't death, he's still _trapped_ and knowing Emu, he'd be worried. And that lack of focus really wasn't something any of them could afford at this point in the game.

Kiriya want to talk to someone else, anyone else so _badly_ at this point. But hey, you can't always get what you want, can you?

With a bitter smile, he stands up and stretches.

Now for the hard part.

See, Kiriya doesn't know if this computer is connected to the real world in the same way that Genm's is, or if it's connected to the real world _through_ Genm's computer. So if he wants to send everyone else the data, Genm could catch him easily. Genm could do all sorts of things, if he knew that Kiriya was in here. It's still Kiriya's best possible option, but… he's going to have to be very, very careful. Genm's already using TOR to cover his tracks on the internet, so that'll help Kiriya too, but there's still that damned _risk_ attached.

Kiriya's got it planned out as best he can. He'll send the data packet out as a kinda-sorta-not-really Trojan virus to his own computer. He's already got the password, and he thinks that he can figure out a way to give it admin privileges— enough to download all of Kiriya's research onto the desktop as soon as someone opens it up and connects it to the internet.

He holds his breath as the loading bar appears on the screen. Genm usually uses the computer in specific segments of time— Kiriya guesses that it means that it corresponds to some kind of sleep schedule? If Genm chose today to break it, though…

The green bar inches forwards bit by bit. Kiriya holds his breath.

98%... 99%... 100%

FILE SENT

"Aaaand… that's that, then." Kiriya lets out a sigh of relief. It's all up to them, now. He closes his laptop with finality, and looks around like he's seeing his familiar office for the first time again. "…Oops, I guess I kinda made a mess of this place, huh? Well, not as if I got anything better to do, now that that's done with…"

Kiriya swivels around and addresses the Bugster, now seemingly unconcious on the examination table. "Hey, you wanna help me clean up? …No? Boooo, you're no fun."

* * *

Now that Kiriya doesn't have work to focus on, there's not much to do.

So lately, he's been thinking. (Again.)

He doesn't know how to get out of this place.

He doesn't know why he's here, and not dead and gone like he should be. (Like how better people have gone. Like how Jungo—)

Was there a reason?

Was there still something left that he needed to do?

After wracking his brain, Kiriya can only really come up with one thing he still hasn't figured out. Genm's security program. If he could get past _that_ , he could get the Proto Gashat data. And if he could get the Proto Gashat data, maybe he could find a way to get people out. (Maybe he could get _himself_ out.)

Genm's almost done with his game. He's not using the Proto Gashat data anymore. So if Kiriya was going to take them, then… now was the time.

There's still no way to get around Genm by himself. But if Kiriya can trick a member of CR into joining him…  he'll have a slim chance. As far as he can tell, Genm hadn't caught his message in a bottle from the last time. (Which doesn't mean it didn't happen, but... Kiriya wants to believe, damn it.) So what if Kiriya sent out another message packet, with directions on how to access the security system…?

Worth a shot, at least.

(A voice in the back of his head says that maybe all this was just an excuse to talk to someone again, and Kiriya was just grasping at straws. Just lie down and die, already, it whispers. Stop butting in where you don’t belong.)

Kiriya tells it quite firmly to shut the hell up. He's got a message to record.

* * *

Time isn't real anymore for Kiriya at all. It hasn't been, not for a while. He's been waiting at the very start of Genm's security system for anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, when someone actually shows up.

He'd been hoping for this— expecting it, even. But still, seeing Hiiro and Emu again feels like a punch to the gut. It's like nothing's changed at all. Well, they think that Kiriya's some kind of nav character, so it's not as if they're making serious conversation with him or anything, but Emu's clearly talking to Poppy and just hearing someone else's voice is enough to remind Kiriya just how goddamn lonely he is—

Focus. He's not here for small talk, dammit. He's just using them to crack Genm’s program.

Hiiro doesn't even get past Motos. Hm. That's… not great.

Emu gets quite a bit further, though. Just like Kiriya expected. And when he reaches the yellow door…

Genm kicks his ass. Ah. That… okay.

 _Change of plans,_ Kiriya thinks. The door's still open, so maybe he can spoof the system into thinking that the hacker was thrown out, and Kiriya can bypass the Genm fight altogether. He walks through the door.

Genm kicks his ass.

_Fuck!_

* * *

Emu tries again.

Maybe he's got a plan this time? If it's Emu, it'll work. For all that he was clumsy and way too trusting sometimes, he could be pretty cunning too. If anyone could pull a fast one on Genm...

Kiriya believes in Emu wholeheartedly. He could do it for sure.

Emu reaches the yellow door again, and Kiriya tenses up. Any minute now, Genm would walk out and attack—

Except he doesn't. Because Emu _doesn't open the door._

Ha.

Kiriya smiles, though nobody can see it. Looks like the one that Emu had gotten the drop on… was him. The ace was still sharp as ever, huh? Well. That’s alright. Kiriya’s pretty good at going with the flow.

And he fights better as part of a team, anyways.

* * *

Kiriya turns the Proto Bakusou Bike Gashat over in his hands. With what he _knows_ to be the data of deleted patients in his hands... is the Gashat heavier, somehow? He looks up. Before him, the skyline flickers, just like it did when he’d first opened his eyes after dying.

Why is he back here?

Not sure. It just felt right, somehow.

Why isn’t he dead and gone?

Not sure.

What Kiriya _is_ sure of is this:

He still has work to do. As long as the Bugster virus was a threat… he couldn’t possibly just lie down and accept his death. He’d asked Emu to carry on his work, sure. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t trust Emu—honestly, if anyone was “destined” to conquer the Bugster virus, it was probably the ace himself. But Kiriya wants to be there when it happened, damn it.

“It’s not over yet,” Kiriya says out loud. “And I can’t rest until I see this through. I… I don’t want to die before I see this damn virus eradicated!”

He blinks. Huh. He’s never really… vocalized that before. He doesn’t _want_ to be dead yet, not while there might be something that he could still do.

Kiriya looks at the horizon and smiles wistfully. “Sorry, Jungo,” he whispers. “Looks like it’s still going to be a while yet.”

He clenches his hands into fists, Proto Bakusou Bike warm in his right palm.

Kiriya’s got a goal to reach for. He’s got only the barest inklings of a plan, and the shadow of Genm’s machinations looming over him, but he’s always been pretty good at improv under pressure.

Step by step.

He raises his right hand, the comforting weight of the Gashat. Bakusou Bike has been kind of a pain to use sometimes, but it's a reminder of why he's here. Why he's come this far.

“Time to start the ride soon.” It's a promise to himself, and he can’t help but smile at his own words.

Kujo Kiriya’s back, baby.

**Author's Note:**

> What is up my fuckin duderinos ive been awake since uhhhhhh time? Some time? trying to edit this fic the MOOD of the day is delirious excitement for the exaid zine I didn’t know there was an exaid zine oh my gooooooooood if only id been into exaid a few months back I totes woulda applied this shits my jam god it looks so cool im gonna have to get it. I have to get it. Hey yall look at exaidzine on twitter ive been sighing over the previews ALL DAY it looks gorgeous oh man i havenot stopped thinking about it for the past 48 hrs at least
> 
> I had something else I was gonna say here but im doped up on a seriously heinous mixture of chinese herbal cough meds and tylenol thisll either cure me or kill me life is short and I wanns get the damn zine im gonna get the damn zi
> 
> OH YEAH that was what I was gonna say. Uhhhh I watched the thing. The lazer short from exaid tricks, and then I was like oh cool but then wait what because lbr that short raises MORE QUESTIONS than it answers so I took out gdocs and smacked shit out with a green slipper until I had something I could live with so here you go pour one out for my boy kiriya rest in fuckin pieces you goddamn relatable foxy dweeb ilu so much
> 
> I am almost certainly going to regret this A/N when i wake up for real. but whatever,


End file.
